Coverup of Ingush Losses in 1992 Clash with North Ossetia Continues, Magas Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 20 – One of the issues that was supposed to be discussed during the visits to Magas of Aleksandr Mukomolov, a member of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, and of Yuri Chaika, the plenipotentiary for the North Caucasus Federal District, was the fate of Ingush who remains MIAs from the 1992 clash between Ingushetia and North Ossetia.

            But, according to Portal Six commentator Akhmed Buzurtanov, this issue was once again swept under the rug precisely because of its ability to trigger anger among Ingush who lost so many co-ethnics in the Prigorodny fighting and know that many listed as missing were buried in mass graves (6portal.ru/posts/могилы-без-даты-смерти-и-преступления/#more-1041).

            The authorities in both Moscow and Magas are unwilling to raise this topic because they recognize how sensitive it is and do not want to provoke new protests. But ever more Ingush, the commentator says, view the Prigorodny district war as evidence that the Russian law on deported peoples has never been fulfilled.

            And such people, Buzurtanov continues, view the two issues as being so interrelated that they should be commemorated at one and the same time on February 23, the anniversary of the deportation, rather than treated in isolation with the 1992 events being downplayed or ignored. Unless both are fully investigated, the Ingush nation will have no peace.

            The 1992 events are not the only ones that require more study. A seminar on “Deportation: The Historic Memory of the People in Faces and Facts” held this week in advance of the commemoration of the anniversary of the deportation concluded that there is still much to be done in researching that event (serdalo.ru/tragicheskie-straniczy-istorii-ingushskogo-naroda/).

            Much necessary archival material is still classified or located beyond the borders of the Russian Federation and thus out of reach of Ingush scholars. One report at the seminar offered an important new detail: Ingush fighting in the Red Army were pulled from the front and sent either to Central Asia or more rarely to timber work in Ivanovo Oblast.

Meanwhile, four Ingush cases advanced in the courtrooms of the North Caucasus: First, a Nalchik court released activist Musharbek Mamatov from detention and allowed him to remain under house arrest until another hearing now scheduled for March 25 (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/346162/).

Second, another court sentenced Bagaudin Myakiyev of the Council of Teips of the Ingush People to 22 months in the camps. His lawyer said that prosecutors had failed to prove that his actions during the March 2019 demonstrations were political (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/346161/).

Third, yet another court sentenced activist Aslan Aushev to 20 months in the camps. But he is likely to be released soon because of time already served while the investigation proceeded (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/346155/). And fourth, at the request of prosecutors, a judge extended the detention of Rezvan Ozdoyev for another three months (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/346151/).